I will be curious to see how the courts finally rule on this matter. Paramount is spot on with its IP in regards all the other copyright issues related to this case. But I think they may be surprised about how things turn out in regard Klingonese.

The parallel between computer languages and human languages is a false comparison. It's like saying the fact that I can own a chair that comes as part of my dining room set means that I can own the chair of the local school board. Certainly, in some locales, the chair of the school board can be bought, but that still doesn't mean that you have the same type of legal relationship as you do with owning a dinner chair. The only similarity is that (amusingly) in a human language, you use the same word for both.

WRT the Klingon language, I think Sony will find out that they don't own it (though they probably do for at least a few of the other items on the list). The current Klingon language from the ST fictional universe was developed by fans in the "great void" between TOS end and TNG beginning and then co-opted into the IP.

While the fans who developed the Klingon language did incorporate some words from TOS (which is all there was in TOS, a few scattered words and phrases), they provided the overwhelming body of the information and the IP owners accepted that when they adopted the language from the fanbase into cannon.

Despite the (bogus) "chilling effect" rhetoric, I support Sony in asserting their IP rights. IP is not a legal machination of the evil corporate shadow world-government to stop people from doing things that they want. IP is a collection of laws enacted to protect the inventors of something new from having others take damaging actions in their name.

The two major classes of damaging activity are theft of your work and doing a bad job that is associated with your work.

FASA developed the background of the "Four Years War". The battle of Axanar was just a throw away line in the episode. I can't really disagree with Sony's position, but TOS IP has always been murky. Paramount allowed lots of folks to slide.

Erm, ethotheipi, I think you are incorrect about your assertion that the Klingon language (as Paramount/CBS undertand it) being a fan creation. Yes, there was a fan created language that emerged through fiction and into the FASA RPG, it has very little connection to that used in the TV series and movies. That was developed from the dialogue created for "The Motion Picture" by James Doohan, which was then evolved by Marc Okrand into something linguistically consistent for "Search for Spock" as the Klingon Langauge consultant on that film.